


Intermissions

by tfm



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Torture, Pre-Relationship, Resurrection, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:07:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23013754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tfm/pseuds/tfm
Summary: In between pain is when we find our greatest strength.Or, over a few harrowing days, Beau and Yasha lean on each other for survival.
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett & Yasha, Beauregard Lionett/Yasha
Comments: 24
Kudos: 394





	1. Yasha

**Author's Note:**

> The what, the why and the how are not the important parts. The important parts are the intermissions.

Intermissions

Whelsen

‘Fuck.’

The sound of Beau’s voice brings Yasha to consciousness. She hadn’t been asleep; the throbbing at the back of her head, and the fact that she’s bleeding from a dozen different places lets her know that there’s something a little more problematic at hand.

There’s also the fact that her hands and feet are manacled together, and she’s lying on a cold, stone floor.

She opens her eyes.

Beau is standing, and she too is wearing manacles. She’s stretched out as far as she can from the wall, but the chain that attaches to a metal ring on the ceiling is pulled taut. Yasha gets the impression that she’s been conscious for some time.

‘Beau,’ she croaks, not realizing how much it hurts to talk until she tries. Beau jumps slightly, then winces at the pull on her muscles. She drops back down to the ground, to Yasha’s side. Yasha tries to get up, but finds her body unwilling to cooperate.

‘They took my thieves tools,’ Beau says, frustrated. Yasha hadn’t even known that Beau _had_ thieves tools. ‘ _And_ all my hairpins.’ Yasha can’t help but raise a bloodied eyebrow.

‘Had to sneak out a lot,’ Beau shrugs. She seems to realize, suddenly, just how much Yasha is bleeding, and immediately goes to take off her Expositor robe, wincing as she does. Yasha had seen the way the hammer had impacted the monk’s chest; there are definitely some broken bones in there, and if she closes her eyes, she can almost imagine them grinding together.

She keeps her eyes open.

Beau tears the robe into strips, and Yasha opens her mouth to argue, but Beau beats her to it. ‘Yash,’ she says. ‘I can get a new robe.’

Yasha knows about the importance of clothes. Even the simplest things can have a great deal of sentiment attached. The shawl she wears, made from wool and leather and put together in piecemeal fashion like most clothes of the Dolorov tribe, had been given to her by Zuala. It’s in tatters now, after what it (and what Yasha) has been through, but she does not dare throw it away. Though they have the gold to afford fine Xhorhasian cloaks, and Marquesian silks, and many other things besides, Yasha will not replace the shawl until she has no other choice.

So when they come in, hours later, and try to take it away, Yasha fights tooth and nail, stopping only when they take the maul to the back of Beau’s knees. Beau collapses with a guttural yell, and clenches her fists in pain.

‘So,’ their captor snarls. ‘You’ll fight to protect each other, is that it?’ He moves to strike again, and Yasha reaches out:

‘No!’

The snarl curls into a grin. He pulls the maul back. Yasha stops resisting. She lets them yank the shawl from her grip, her last physical link to the woman that she loved. In the moment, though, that’s nothing compared to the grimace of pain that’s on Beau’s face.

‘It’s nothing,’ Beau says, when they're alone again once more. ‘I’ve had worse from people that _weren’t_ trying to hurt me.’ Still, Yasha notices that she’s favoring one leg, that she winces slightly when she puts weight on it.

Beau had given up her coat and her boots with considerably less fight, but considering those, Yasha is sure, had both been stolen, there’s not as much meaning attached to it. Beau says as much, half a minute later.

‘Fucking cold, though,’ she mutters, which Yasha is sure is the point. The fact that they haven’t been relieved of the rest of their clothes is some small favor. Her tunic covers far more skin than Beau’s crop top, and though it’s dark in their cell, Yasha can see the goosebumps starting to rise on the other woman’s skin.

‘Come here,’ she says, and pulls Beau into her.

‘Sorry,’ Beau murmurs, into the skin of Yasha’s shoulder. ‘But if you want to hold me, that’ll be five gold.’ Yasha almost laughs, but stops herself. She remembers the first night with the Iron Shepherds, when Jester, though terrified out of her mind, had tried so hard to stay positive, to try to get them to laugh.

It hadn’t lasted.

Yasha wonders how doomed she is, to have to repeat this experience again

Remembering the skills at her disposal, she puts a hand to Beau’s shoulder, and casts _Healing Hands_. Already asleep, Beau doesn’t seem to notice.

Conthsen

The next morning, it takes Yasha a few moments to remember what’s going on. She’s certainly slept in far more uncomfortable places, so the rocks digging into her back, and the chains digging into her wrists and ankles aren’t an immediate clue.

What _is_ an immediate clue is the very close sound of someone else’s breathing, and the hair that’s resting across her cheek. Beau is still asleep, Yasha thinks. She doesn’t hold herself so…loosely while she’s awake, unless she’s meditating, and even then, it’s a practiced sort of relaxation. This is far more vulnerable than Yasha thinks Beau would want to be seen.

Beau wakes not long after that, and for some reason Yasha doesn’t want to let on that she’d already been conscious. She lies there for a bit, not daring to make comment on the fact that, even now that she’s awake, Beau hasn’t moved her head from against Yasha’s side.

‘It's weird, right?' Beau says, without anything to prompt it. She does this sometimes, just says what's on her mind without any preamble. Maybe Yasha hadn’t been as sneaky with her consciousness as she’d thought.

'What's weird?' Yasha asks.

‘Oh.’ Beau seems to realize that she hadn’t contextualized her question. 'That Jester hasn't sent a message.'

That _is_ weird, Yasha thinks. They had been separated from the group, yes, but it had been a planned separation. Jester had been sending them messages every day to make sure things were okay. 'Maybe she tried sending them while you were asleep,' she says.

Beau hmmms a little, but doesn't seem convinced. They haven’t yet discussed the _why_ of them being here. Why their captors had taken them alive, rather than just killing them on the spot. Perhaps they think that they can get some money in one way or another. Save the Mighty Nein, there’s no-one left alive that would pay ransom for Yasha. Beau would perhaps have a better chance; either her family, or the Cobalt Soul might be willing to pay a lot to get her back.

That’s one thing that’s definitely fixed in Yasha’s mind; Beau has far more people waiting on her to come back. She has to survive this.

‘When they come,’ Yasha says, seemingly out of nowhere. ‘Let them take me.’

Beau stares at her like she’s crazy. ‘No,’ she says, flatly. ‘I’m not gonna let you take the damage on this, Yasha. It’s bad enough that you used your healing on me.’ _Ah._ Yasha should have known better than to think that she could have gotten away with that. ‘We get through this together, or not at all.’ Beau has a steely sort of look on her face, and Yasha realizes that they’re both making compromises.

‘Together, or not at all,’ she echoes, and, against her better judgment, puts a hand to her own shoulder. Under the makeshift bandages, some of her wounds start to seal. She puts a hand to Beau’s shoulder, and Beau flinches slightly.

‘Sorry,’ Beau mutters, and takes a deep breath in as the healing magic passes through her. ‘You can do that how often?’

‘Once a day,’ Yasha tells her. That is, of course, assuming that their captors don’t get wind of it, and assuming that the torture they ensure isn’t more than what she can heal.

Yasha’s no fool, after all. She’s been in enough chains to know that they aren’t going to get through this without incurring some pain. It had happened with the Iron Shepherds, it had happened with Obann, and it was happening again.

These things always did happen in threes.

First Zuala, then Mollymauk…there would not be a third if she could help it.

Folsen

Sometime that night, they leave food and water.

To say that it’s not a lot would be generous. There’s a barely full waterskin, and a bruised apple, plus a couple of pieces of moldy bread.

‘I’m not hungry,’ Beau and Yasha both say at the same time. They’re both lying, and they both know it. That’s two nights they’ve spent here now, with no food, and no water. Beau gives a tiny chuckle.

‘I’m kinda used to going without food,’ Beau says, with a slight shrug. Yasha frowns. She remembers the Estate in Kamordah; her parents had seemed quite well off. Beau seems to notice her expression. ‘Sometimes when my dad got angry, he’d lock me in my room without meals. That was before I learned to start keeping it in my pocket.’

‘Oh,’ Yasha says. She had not meant for her voice to sound so sad. She too, is used to days without food. The Dolorov Tribe had been hunters and gatherers, primarily, but the Iothlia Moorlands had not been overflowing with life, and some months, the pickings were lean.

‘I mean,’ Beau says, suddenly frustrated. ‘Agh. Sorry, I wasn’t trying to rack up sympathy, I just…I learned to go without, sometimes.’

In the end, they split it. Yasha’s not overly fond of apples, or even bread. Her palate is more suited to meats, and root vegetables. She doubts they’re going to offer spider, or rat, but it’s not as though they’ve got a lot of choice. They may have to survive for days.

They still don’t know why they’re here, or what’s going to happen to them. Yasha has the vaguest thought that they’re trying to weaken them with exposure, and with minor starvation before they start on anything more violent. Not that they aren’t already injured enough. Though she’s trying to hide it, Yasha has heard the wheezing breaths that Beau takes when her broken ribs shift.

Jester messages in the afternoon. They’ve been lying in silence for the better part of an hour. It’s a little warmer during the day, and they’ve got enough slack that they don’t have to be lying right next to each other, but they are anyway. Beau had instigated it, and Yasha is pretty awkward when it comes to prolonged physical affection, she’s not going to pull away.

‘Jes!’ Beau says, suddenly, sitting upright. ‘Fuck. Yes, they did fucking get us. We’re both…alive for now. Not sure where. There’s snow outside, and the building’s made of stone. We were unconscious when they brought us in.’ She pauses. ‘Fuck, that was more than twenty-five.’ She sits back with a relieved sort of sigh. ‘Well, at least now they know we’re missing,’ she says. There’s another pause. ‘Don’t worry, we can hold out.’ Yasha raises an eyebrow at that. She’s not sure whether Beau is mollifying Jester, or genuinely believes what she’s saying. The fact that Jester has contacted them though, is some comfort. Between them all, the rest of the group have the skills and the resources to track them down.

After the messages stop, there’s a long silence between them, that’s broken by Beau.

‘Hey Yash?’ Beau’s voice is soft. Her seems parched in spite of the water, and any sound too loud seems hurts her ribs. ‘Have you ever died before?’

Yasha doesn’t answer straight away. She’s not quite sure how to answer. She doesn’t want to think about what dark thoughts have been running through Beau’s mind that she’s asking this question. ‘Many times,’ she says, finally. Beau stiffens suddenly beside her. ‘But not in the way I think you mean. When Zuala died, so did I, and when Mollymauk died, so did I. The person that moved on from those experiences is not the same one that went into them. So in a sense, I died.’

Beau seems a little frustrated by that response. ‘Come on, Yash, that’s not what I meant.’ She gives a weak sort of laugh. ‘If you’re going by that metric, then we’ve all died a bunch of times. I—’ She falters, then, and Yasha wonders what secret the other woman might have been on the verge of revealing. It’s one of the things that intrigues her so much about Beau. Beau who is loud, and brash, and anything but subtle, and yet somehow seems to play all her cards so close to the chest that it was months before Yasha knew anything about her past. ‘I guess I’m just not the same person that left Kamordah all those years ago, but I mean…it’s still me that made those changes.’

Yasha wonders what she had planned to say.

It’s strange.

For all that she _has_ changed, there’s a little bit of Yasha that can’t quite relate. The child that had been born in the Iothlia Moorlands had been just as brutal, just as bloodthirsty, just as violent as she is now. Even the Yasha that had been married under the bright light of the Xhorhasian moon, the happiest she had ever been, had been barely tempered by the warmth of love.

She’s a long way from that person now, but sometimes – just sometimes – she almost thinks she might be heading back in that direction. The Mighty Nein bring her a newfound happiness that looks like it may just last.

At least it will if they ever get out of here. 

They come in the night.

It’s something that the Iron Shepherds had done as well, and she wonders why. Maybe their minds are weaker at night, more susceptible to the torture.

They seem to decide that Beau is the weaker of the two of them (their mistake), and are both awarded a fist to the face. There’s a loud shout, and some pulling, and kicking, and when Yasha tries to intervene, her chains are tightened, and she’s pushed back. When the dust settles, Beau’s face is covered in blood, and her breathing is labored.

She’s still conscious though, which Yasha thinks is a good thing, until the guard pulls out a rusted looking dagger. ‘We’ll see who breaks first, hmm?’ he says.

Yasha snarls, and tugs at the chains again. If nothing else, then she can at least get his attention away from Beau. She hadn’t been able to protect Beau before, but she will do it now if it kills her. She lashes out with her foot, and it comes just close enough to get his attention.

It hurts (Gods does it hurt), but they focus on her, which, in the end, is the main thing that she’d wanted. Beau is pale with shock, but has so few marks compared to Yasha’s dozens. How much blood she’s lost in the last two days alone is something she doesn’t want to think about.

‘That was stupid,’ Beau says, under her breath, as she cleans Yasha’s wounds. Her words come out a little nasally, thanks to the three or four kicks to the face she’d taken, and very measured, thanks to the broken ribs. Yasha had argued the matter, as they had precious little water, but Beau had ignored her. The wounds sting, but when it’s done, Yasha does feel a little better.

 _That was practical_ , Yasha thinks, but doesn’t say. They can’t escape here if both of them are incapacitated, and Yasha is not so stupid to think that she’d be the useful one in this situation. Her single plan had involved trying to bend the bars, and though she’d put all of her strength into it, she hadn’t managed to pull them apart.

Yasha’s not one to wait around not doing anything. It’s why, with the Iron Shepherds, they had focused on her, rather than on Fjord and Jester. She had been just a little too aggressive, a little too much trouble. She still has the scars to remember that by.

These will almost definitely scar, given that this time she doesn’t even have a cleric nearby to give her the healing that they need. Her own healing hands will be the only thing that keeps them both going for however long this takes.

Beau sits back, after tying off the last bandage. Her nose looks broken, and one of her eyes is swollen near shut. There’s not much to be done about the swelling, but the nose at least, they can set. ‘I’ll just put my face to the frozen floor,’ Beau says, as she breathes a sigh of relief. Yasha puts her hand to Beau’s cheek, and lets her meagre magic stitch the bone back together. Against her own judgement, she pulls the hand back to her own shoulder, and does the same.

It barely seems to do much at all, but at least, if nothing else, they’ll make it through the night.

Yulisen

Jester messages three times the next morning, asking questions, and making sure that they’re still okay. Beau doesn’t mention the torture, even though Yasha’s sure that Jester would have asked. She gets the impression that they’re narrowing down locations, but after a while, the messages stop, which means they must have found a lead.

It’s a bitter cold sort of morning, somehow even colder than the night had been, and they’re both shivering. Yasha does not waste time in pulling Beau closer into her, but even the body heat barely seems to do anything. Beau’s skin feels like ice, and her eyes are wet with tears.

‘Is—was it cold in Kamordah?’ Yasha recalls the night they’d arrived in the town. It had been cold that night, she remembers. Cold, and wet, and altogether miserable.

Beau seems a little surprised at the question. After all, they’re a long way from Kamordah, a long way from Zadash and Rosohna, and anything else at all, really.

‘Sort of,’ Beau said. ‘But not like…cold cold. Doesn’t snow or anything. Even when it rains, though, the ground is really warm, so it’s miserable in other ways.’ She pauses. ‘It’s super shitty in summer, though. And in the spring, everything gets moldy cos it’s so wet. Just…a shitty place to live in general.’

Yasha gets the impression that she’s not just talking about the weather.

The Iothlia Moorlands are much further south than Kamordah, but they had not had the roaring fireplaces and warm bedrooms of the Lionett Estate. Though their tents had been well-protected from the weather, Yasha had learned to survive in all kinds of situations. The Sky-Spear had seen to that.

They’re well north of all of that, now, judging by the flurries of snow that drift past the window. A few errant flakes make it inside. Inside, where it surely must be just as cold as the outside. The blood-stained stonework is like ice. These prisons had definitely not been built with comfort in mind.

More than likely, it had been built with torture in mind. The captors return that evening with leather whips and cold, dead eyes. Yasha’s not sure who bears the brunt of it in actuality, but in her head, it feels like she is forever watching one of her closest friends put through an inordinate amount of pain. It’s not until it’s over, and she tries to collapse onto her back that she realizes just how much pain she’s in.

They had both made efforts at fighting back, at lashing out, at hurting their captors, and they had both paid the price.

‘They’re getting a bit soft,’ Beau says, her lip bleeding from where she’d bitten into it. Though her words are sarcastic, they come out with a gasping pain. ‘I’ve been whipped harder than that by people I paid to do it.’ Yasha’s not quite ready to laugh, yet. She puts a hand to Beau’s shoulder, and casts _Healing Hands_ , using all the reserves that she has. If Beau notices that when Yasha puts a hand to her own shoulder, nothing happens, she doesn’t say anything.

Sleep doesn’t come easy.

Exhausted though they both are, the pain is enough to keep them awake. Every time Yasha adjusts her body, agony shoots through it. She’s tried so hard until this point to ignore the pain, but she can’t ignore it any longer.

Conversation, strangely, helps. Not too much conversation, because it kind of hurts to talk, but enough to distract them from everything else that’s going on.

It’s mostly stupid things. Things that Yasha never would have considered talking about had they not been trapped here together. Things like favorite foods, and favorite time of day. ‘Sunrise,’ Beau says. ‘Cos I can just get up and pump out a bunch of pull-ups. Plus, y’know, there’s that moment, right before the sun starts to come up from below the horizon where everything just feels so peaceful.’

The softness in her voice almost makes Yasha wish that sunrise had been her favorite time of day as well. Hers is sunset, when the whole world just about looks like it’s on fire.

They don’t talk, for a little while.

‘Sorry I used to flirt with you so much.’ The words come almost from nowhere, and it's one of the weirder things anyone has ever apologized to Yasha for, and she's not even really sure why it's necessary. Beau sounds exhausted, and on the edge of delirium, but seems to think it's important. 'Wouldn't have done it if I'd known you were spoken for.’

_Oh._

‘I'm not spoken for,’ Yasha says, gently. It's truer now than it had been even six months ago.

‘’s funny,' Beau says, half sounding as though she hadn’t heard Yasha’s response. ‘I've hooked up with plenty of married women for all the wrong reasons, and it's the only time I’ve felt guilty about it. At least about the married part.'

There are so many things in that short snippet that intrigue Yasha, but in end, she only asks one question. ‘What are the wrong reasons?’

‘Oh, you know… Gathering information, blackmail…fun.’ Beau, for her part, sounds a little guilty about the revelation. Yasha considers how different she is to the person that she had met in a tavern in Trostenwald all those months ago. The Beau she knows is an ardent gatherer of information, yes, but she seems to have something of a moral code. ‘Young Beau was a dick,’ Beau adds, as she notes the expression on Yasha’s face.

‘Did you kill anyone?’ Yasha asks, and Beau seems kind of startled at the question.

‘No, of course not.’

‘Then I think you can be forgiven.’ Yasha’s thinking of her own childhood now, of the Orphanmaker, and of all the things she had done. Beau doesn’t look convinced.

More to the point, she looks like she doesn’t really want to talk about it, so Yasha relents. ‘I don’t mind that you flirted with me,’ is all she says, and it earns her a sly sort of grin from Beau.

‘Yeah?’

‘I mean, if you call that flirting.’

Beau laughs, and it’s a wet sort of sound. ‘I’ll have to up my game,’ is all she says. ‘You know, if we make it out of here.’

Yasha squeezes Beau’s hand. ‘We’ll make it out of here,’ she says.

Da’leysen

They come in the morning this time, swords drawn and bloodlust in their eyes. Beau tries to stop them from shoving a sword through Yasha’s gut, and earns two more maul hits to the back of her legs for the effort. They’d laughed, then, as they stabbed Yasha anyway, but the blood that pours from her stomach seems inconsequential compared to the other thing.

Beau is breathing hard, each broken breath accompanied by moans of pain. Her pupils are so wide, so black, that Yasha can barely see the blue behind them.

She has a decent amount of experience with broken bones. It had happened more than once when the Dolorov Tribe was out hunting, and someone had taken a bad fall.

It’s not a clean break. Yasha can feel the fragments of bone even as she goes to set it.

‘Grab my shoulder,’ she instructs, and whimpering, Beau does so. Yasha desperately looks for something that Beau can bit down on, but there’s nothing. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispers, and jerks her hand.

Beau screams.

It’s a horrifying, heart-wrenching sound that Yasha’s sure she’s never heard before. Even in the days that they’ve whiled away here in this dank dungeon, even after being cut, and burned, and whipped, there hasn’t been a sound like this. Beau’s eyes are wet with tears, and she sobs through gasping breaths.

The second break, at least, doesn’t need to be set.

Beau gives a shaky sort of laugh, and for half a second, Yasha thinks she’s about to make a comment. Instead, all she says is, ‘Fuck.’

‘I don’t have anything to splint them with,’ Yasha says. She looks at the bandages – the torn robes – covering her own wounds. They’re not ideal, but at the very least they might keep the bone from shifting too much. Beneath the bloodied bandages, her wounds are starting to heal over. At least, the ones she’d gotten on that first day. It’s probably not the best idea to wrap the split the breaks with something covered in blood, but there are precious few other options. Even if the rest of their clothes hadn’t been just as dirty, just as bloody, the nights are near freezing, and they need as much warmth as they can get.

‘You gotta get outta here, Yash,’ Beau mutters. ‘They’re gonna kill one of us soon, and…and I’m not going anywhere.’

Yasha doesn’t rise to the bait. ‘I don’t know how far I would make it,’ she admits. Now that the adrenaline’s faded a little, she can feel the too-fast beating of her heart, as it pumps out blood.

‘What?’ Beau’s voice is soft, and scared. She looks down at Yasha’s abdomen, and seems to see the wound for the first time. ‘Fuck, Yasha…You need to heal yourself.’

‘I’m fine,’ Yasha says, and the strange thing is, she means it. An odd sort of calm has come over her, because she knows what’s going to happen. She puts a hand against the protesting Beau’s shoulder, and heals.

At least one of them will make it out of here alive.

The next time they come, she rages.

It’s the rage that she’s been holding back for days, the rage she hasn’t used for fear of putting Beau in more danger, because she knows that the rest of the group are on their way. It doesn’t matter now.

She’ll be dead before they get here.

They burst into the cell, with their torture implements, and when she screams with all the pain she has ever felt, they laugh. They don’t laugh quite as hard when she pulls her wrists apart, and the chain between the manacles breaks like it’s made of twine.

‘Yasha!’ Beau’s calling her name; saying something that she can’t quite hear through the thumping sound of her own heart beating. One of them, she crushes his head against the stone wall, the other, she wraps the chains around his neck, and doesn’t let go.

It’s not until the door to the cell swings open again that she realizes there had been more than two.

Beau’s on her feet, hand against the wall to stop herself from falling over. ‘Yasha,’ she says again, this time more softly. She’s crying, for some reason. Yasha follows her gaze, and realizes that she’s covered in blood.

Her blood.

‘Beau—’ she says, and drops to her knees.

That’s the last thing she remembers.

Whelsen (Reprise)

Yasha wakes, and for a moment, she’s surprised. She sees a sword in her gut, the blood pouring from her wounds, the light fading. It comes in flashes, a memory that might as well belong to someone else for all that she connects to it.

She opens her eyes, and realizes that she’s surrounded by flowers. Beautiful flowers, of all different sizes, and shapes, and colors. Some of them remind her of the ones she has in her book, and she could swear there are a few that are shaped a bit too much like a dick.

She blinks.

She’s in her room at the Xhorhaus, blankets twisted around her exhausted, scarred body. Apparently alive.

She’s not sure why that’s a surprise. Not sure why her memory’s so fuzzy.

_What happened?_

‘Don’t sit up too quickly,’ says a calm-sounding voice. Yasha turns her head, and sees Caduceus sitting in a chair by the bed. There’s a kettle on the nightstand, and he’s in the process of pouring out a strong-smelling tea. ‘Thought you might be up soon.’

‘What happened?’ Yasha asks. It hurts to talk, and the words that come out are croaky.

‘You died,’ Caduceus says. It takes a few seconds for the words to sink in. Yasha’s kind of grateful that it’s Caduceus at her side. She doesn’t think that anyone else would have been as direct about it. They would have tried to spare her feelings.

She sits up. Slowly, and with Caduceus’s help, but she sits up. She doesn’t think she’s ever felt this tired before. The memory of dying is slowly coming back to her; the snow, the cell, the torture…The sword through her gut. Beau.

She yanks the cup away from her mouth quickly, spilling hot liquid over herself. ‘Beau,’ she gasps out. ‘Where is—is she…?’

‘She’s fine,’ Caduceus says, in that slow sort of voice of his. ‘She’s sleeping. Took a lot of convincing to get her to leave your bedside.’

‘How long?’

He seems to consider the question. ‘They had you for almost five days,’ he says, ‘And you died a little over a week ago.’

There’s another question: one that she doesn’t quite want to ask, but knows she’ll regret it if she doesn’t. ‘How long was I dead?’

‘We’re not sure,’ he admits. ‘We think maybe about twelve hours. Beau wasn’t in a great state when we got there.’ Yasha can’t ask what that means. She knows she hadn’t killed all of the captors, that there had still been at least one left alive. If his anger at his friends’ deaths had caused him to take it out on Beau…Yasha doesn’t know if she can forgive herself for that.

She falls asleep again, for a little bit, and when she wakes, her mind is a little clearer, her body a little less sore. It’s Fjord by her side now, and it must be nighttime, because, though he’s sitting upright with his arms folded, he seems to be dozing slightly.

He jerks awake at the slight movement. Yasha wonders if that had been part of his life as a sailor, ready to wake up and pull ropes at a moment’s notice.

‘Hey, Yasha,’ he breathes, and his voice sounds more than a little relieved. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Hungry,’ Yasha says, and Fjord gives a laugh that seems sad more than anything.

‘Yeah, Beau was pretty fucking hungry, too. Cad made some soup. Stay here, and I can go and reheat some for you.’

‘No,’ Yasha says. She pulls herself into a fully seated position, and swings her legs over the side of the bed. Fjord moves to stop her, but she pushes him back. Even in her weakened state, he is nowhere near as strong as she is. ‘I will come downstairs.’

The sound of her footsteps on the landing seems to awaken the household. The door to the room next door to hers opens so fast that it slams against the wall and almost bounces back to hit Jester in the face.

‘Yasha!’ She runs forward immediately to give Yasha a hug, tail swishing back and forth excitedly. Once or twice, it bumps into Yasha’s back. ‘We were so worried,’ Jester speaks into the crook of Yasha’s shoulder. Yasha’s not very good at the comforting thing, but manages one or two pats to the back, before she looks up and sees Beau standing in the doorway. Jester seems to notice the way that Yasha’s whole body seems to stiffen, and pulls away.

Beau hobbles over, still unsteady on legs that, the last time Yasha had seen them, had been broken. She doesn’t say anything, but wraps Yasha in a tight, bone-shattering hug that seems to last several minutes.

‘Thought I lost you,’ Beau mutters. Yasha doesn’t look down, but she can feel the wet of Beau’s tears against her tunic.

‘You could not get rid of me so easily,’ Yasha says, when they finally pull apart. ‘They would not be able to keep me from you.’ She knows, of course, of Beau’s fear of abandonment. It’s a not so hidden secret that they’ve all silently agreed not to talk about.

Beau gives a small smile at that. It’s comforting, yet nowhere near the easy sort of grin that Beau is capable of. ‘Yeah, ditto,’ she says. She casts her gaze downwards, as though afraid to look Yasha in the eyes.

They go downstairs, where Veth and Caleb are already in the kitchen. Veth does not bother with niceties, and immediately runs to hug Yasha. Caleb is a little more cautious. He hangs back a little bit, but smiles warmly when he moves slowly in for a hug.

The soup is good.

It’s some variety of onion, and Yasha eats half a bowl of it before Caduceus pulls it away. ‘If you eat too fast, it’ll be worse,’ he says, ‘Trust me.’

They hang around in the kitchen all afternoon, but eventually almost everyone makes an excuse to go back to their normal routine. Caleb and Veth run off to buy paper, and Jester goes to draw in her sketchbook, and Caduceus and Fjord are planning on doing something involving the Wildmother…Yasha is no fool. She may use her muscles more than her brains, but even she can tell when her friends are conspiring.

‘How are you?’ she asks, when she and Beau are finally alone. Beau shrugs.

‘You know,’ she says. ‘Good days, bad days. Legs aren’t quite healed yet, but everything else is getting there.’

‘I…’ Yasha starts. She puts her spoon down, and pushes the bowl away. ‘I’m sorry I left you there alone.’

Beau’s eyes widen. ‘Are you kidding me?’ she says, with an exasperated sort of laugh. ‘Yash, you don’t have to apologize for _dying_.’

Yasha has no plans on retracting the apology.

She puts her hand atop Beau’s.

‘I promise I will never do it again,’ she says.


	2. Beau

Intermissions II

Whelsen

Beau blinks.

It’s dark. Darker than it’s supposed to be.

Even when it’s a moonless night (or when only Ruidis is in the sky), there’s enough light from the stars that it’s never fully pitch-black.

Beau reaches for her goggles, and finds them gone.

 _Well, shit_.

It shouldn’t be the first indicator that something’s wrong. The first indicator should be the fact that her ribs feel like someone took a hammer to them, and also the fact is that the last thing she remembers is someone taking a hammer to her ribs. Not even a small hammer, but a big fucking warhammer.

The second thing that’s wrong is the fact that she’s in chains. In chains, and lying on a cold stone floor.

So, not the greatest start to the day.

Beau tries to clear her mind, to remember the reason _why_ she’s here. She and Yasha had—

_Yasha!_

‘Yasha!’ Beau calls out, in a loud whisper. If there are people watching, then she doesn’t want them to know that she’s awake.

There’s no response, but the way the hairs stand up on the back of Beau’s neck make her think that she’s not alone.

She stops moving for a minute, and just listens. After about ten seconds, her ears pick up the sound of breathing. Not loud, and slower than she would like, but steady enough. She carefully edges towards the sound, stopping only when she runs smack bang into the wall.

‘Fuck.’ It’s the shock, more than the pain that has her swearing, and she edges along the wall until her foot hits something solid that feels like flesh.

‘Yasha,’ Beau whispers again, feeling out with her hands as she gets down to her knees. The figure is unmoving, but still breathing. Definitely Yasha, judging by the well-sculpted muscle, and the matted hair, and the worn leather.

Yasha is either asleep, or unconscious, and, judging by the fact that she’d been covered in blood when Beau had last seen her, smart money is on the latter. She’s still breathing, and when Beau manages to find her neck, the pulse feels steady. But, Beau’s not a cleric, or a healer, or anything like that, so she’s got no idea what that really means in the long run.

She swears, and flops down against the wall. There’s nothing she can do while it’s pitch black like this, and, frankly, she’d feel a little better if Yasha had been awake.

At least then, she’d have someone to talk to.

The next time Beau opens her eyes, the sun is piercing through a single barred window. It’s still mostly dark, but now she can see that they’re in a cell that’s barely four foot by four foot, and both of them are chained and manacled. Yasha’s hair and clothes are both matted with blood. Beau thinks she’s sleeping. She’s pretty sure she’s sleeping.

She puts a hand to Yasha’s cheek. ‘Yash?’ she says, uncertainly. Yasha doesn’t stir.

No magic, no potions, no healing kit, there’s not much that Beau can do that’s helpful except figure a way out of this place. She gets to her feet, groaning at the pull on her ribs. They’re cracked at the very least, broken or fractured at worst, and if she pulls on them too much, then she’s going to end up with a punctured lung.

The chain has a little bit of give, and Beau can get almost to the other wall, before it jerks tight. Here, the light is a little better, and she can see the lock on her manacles. She pulls experimentally a few times, stopping only when she notices that Yasha’s bound with the same chain, and Beau having more give means that Yasha has less. She’ll move back as soon as she’s picked the lock. Her thieves tools are gone, but – she puts a hand to her head – ‘Fuck!’

Hairpins are gone, too.

Her words seem to stir Yasha to consciousness. There’s a groan and a slight whimper. ‘Beau.’ Beau jumps, and winces. It takes everything Beau has not to immediately just drop to her side. Gotta play it casual.

Why exactly she’s got to play it casual, she’s not sure. ‘They took my thieves tools,’ she says, frowning. ‘ _And_ all my hairpins.’ There’s a slight smirk on Yasha’s face. Beau shrugs. ‘Had to sneak out a lot.’

Yasha lowers her bloodied eyebrow, and Beau realizes, too late, just how much blood there actually is. They had both put up a hell of a fight, but Yasha had definitely taken the brunt of it.

 _Fuck_.

Beau takes off her robe.

She’s so fucking stupid, she should have done this while Yasha was unconscious. At least then, there would have been less of a risk of bleeding out. Yasha opens her mouth, but Beau doesn’t even wait for the argument.

‘Yash,’ she says, the nickname slipping out before she can stop it, ‘I can get a new robe.’ The robe is quite possible the least important thing happening here. She’d worked hard for the robe, but it’s worthless compared to someone’s life, least of all _Yasha’s_ life.

It tears into strips more easily than she would have expected for something that had been so hard to get. She supposes it helps that it’s been torn and sliced and slashed a dozen or so times in the months that she’s gotten it. Jester’s _Mending_ spell is good, but maybe it lessens the lifetime of the material.

Or something like that.

When Beau’s done, Yasha looks a little bit better; wounds wrapped, and some of the blood cleaned off. They don’t have anything in the way of water, but it’s snowing outside, and there’s a little bit of moisture building up on the bars of the cell window.

 _Would be great to have some magic right about now_ , she thinks. Caduceus and Jester can make food and water appear with the snap of their fingers. Fjord can teleport with a crack of thunder. Caleb can set off a _Fireball_ that would blow a hole in the wall. Even Veth has some pretty sweet magic up her hand. Of all of them to get stuck in this place, she and Yasha are probably the worst.

In some ways, maybe they’re the best, too, though Beau’s not entirely sure why. Maybe because they’re used to the pain.

Beau goes over the cell with a fine-tooth comb, looking for any hint of a flaw in the stonework, or a chunk of loose rock, or literally anything that could be used as a tool to get them out, or, failing that, a weapon.

There’s nothing.

Even the lock is sturdy enough that she couldn’t jiggle it open, the way she used to be able to do with the gate that surrounded the Lionett Estate back in Kamordah.

She slumps back onto the ground, trying to ignore the way her ribs shift in pain. Yasha doesn’t say anything. In fact, neither of them says anything for what feels like hours, but in reality is probably more like twenty minutes. Beau’s not entirely surprised; Yasha’s never really been much of a talker. Most of the conversations they’ve had, Beau’s been the one to instigate them. Not that it matters; there’s value in silence after all.

Beau’s not great at small talk. The times she’s been on watch with Yasha, when she doesn’t have something important she wants to talk about, she defaults to stupid stuff, like grass, or the weather. “How about that captivity, huh?” seems like it might be too on the nose of a topic.

Not that she’s overthinking it or anything.

In the end, they talk about whether Fjord would look better with or without a beard. It’s an innocent enough subject that it takes their mind of things, but it’s enough to keep them both sort of tethered to reality. Yasha thinks he looks better with a beard, and Beau doesn’t really care one way or the other, but takes up the contrary position, just so there’s something to argue about.

It’s not long before someone comes.

If Beau had been in any mood to make jokes, she might have said something about them coming just to stop Beau from talking about how much she prefers smooth skin, but they’re not quite there yet.

She clenches her fists as she gets to her feet, and next to her, Yasha follows suit. It’ll take more than a couple of guys to keep them down.

Admittedly, she had forgotten about the chains. The punches she throws are stopped in mid-air by the restraints, and she doesn’t quite have the give to dodge the first blow of the maul. Next to her, Yasha is going through the same struggle.

‘Take off your boots,’ the one with the maul says. It’s an ugly looking thing, the rust along its spiked head making it look like it’s already covered in blood. Beau eyes it, warily.

She takes off her boots.

Then, she takes off her coat, and her wraps.

They don’t ask her to take off anything else.

Maybe they’re drawing it out, or maybe they’re not interested in whatever that is. Beau doesn’t really have time to speculate, because her attention is drawn by Yasha’s refusal to give up her shawl. Before she can move to even do anything in Yasha’s defense, she feels the maul smash into the back of her legs.

She falls to the ground, a white-hot light behind her eyes. The pain is overwhelming, and the world is a blur, but the worst part of it is seeing the look in Yasha’s eyes when they yank the shawl from her hands. Shaking, she puts a hand to Beau’s arm.

‘It’s nothing,’ Beau mutters. She shuffles a little closer to Yasha, wincing at the pain in her right leg. ‘I’ve had worse than that from people that _weren’t_ trying to hurt me.’

There’s a long pause.

‘You really like that shawl, huh?’ Beau says. She gives half a laugh, but there’s no humor to it.

‘Zuala gave it to me,’ Yasha says. There’s a moment of awkward silence. It’s probably the frankest that Yasha has ever been about Zuala. Beau can’t quite relate. She doesn’t have anyone in her life that she’s loved that much, or, more to the point, there’s no-one in her life that’s loved _her_ that much. Not in the same sort of way.

Yasha frowns. Her eyes are sort of glazed over, and she doesn’t look entirely there. ‘Your coat,’ she says, and it takes Beau a few moments to realize what she’s talking about. She’d been so focused on the pain from the maul, she hadn’t even really processed everything else.

Beau snorts. ‘I stole that from Avantika,’ she says. ‘And the boots I stole from that Kryn assassin.’ The only thing she hadn’t stolen is the robe, which is much more useful stemming the flow of Yasha’s blood than it is keeping Beau warm. Not that there’s any warmth to it. Everything she’s ever gotten, everything they’ve taken, she’s had to work for herself.

Actually, that’s not true, she realizes. They’ve taken the jade necklace – the new jade necklace – that her father had given her. The one that is supposed to protect her. Superstitious bullshit, in Beau’s opinion, but, she’s in a pretty shitty situation without the necklace, so there may be some merit to it.

Ugh.

If this is day one, and she’s already reached the point of thinking her father wasn’t too bad of a dude after all, then she’s fucked.

Conthsen

Beau wakes up in a position that’s, frankly, really fucking uncomfortable. Her ribs are still in agony, but the leg feels maybe a little bit better, and the stone floor that had been freezing the night before is somehow even colder now.

The only saving grace is the fact that she’s pretty sure she’s wrapped in the arms of a beautiful woman. Definitely not the first time she’s woken up this way, but it’s the first time that it’s been Yasha, so kind of a win.

Of course, there’s a reason she’s been kind of keeping her distance on the “flirting with Yasha” front. Not that flirting with a married person had ever really bothered her before this. Just with Yasha…well, she wanted to think she had a little more respect for Yasha than the people she’d hooked up with during her rebellious asshole years.

So, she’d kept her distance. Forced herself to _not_ feel whatever it was she was feeling, and maybe focus on some other weird feelings instead. It hadn’t really worked, and now there are _two_ sets of feelings that are sort of just swirling around in there.

Beau doesn’t want to move her head from where it’s resting into Yasha. She tries to tell herself that it’s for the sole purpose of staying warm, but even that’s maybe a little bit of a lie. The true is, she feels safe. Or at least as safe as she can be with them both trapped in this cell, facing unknown horrors.

Surely, though, the others will be able to find them. Surely Jester will be able to scry, to figure out where they are and what had happened. Strange that they haven’t heard from the others, yet, though.

‘It’s weird, right?’ she says, forgetting too late that she hasn’t even said “good morning” or anything like that.

‘What’s weird?’

‘Oh.’ Yeah, that would probably help. ‘That Jester hasn’t sent a message.’ Now that she thinks about it, maybe it isn’t so strange. It had been a planned separation, after all.

‘Maybe she tried sending them while you were asleep,’ Yasha suggests.

Beau considers it. She’s never actually gotten a message in her sleep before, so she’s not entirely sure what it sounds like.

‘When they come,’ Yasha says, ‘Let them take me.’ It sort of comes out of nowhere, and Beau feels her whole body stiffen. Maybe because it’s the eventuality that they’ve both been thinking about, even if they haven’t really realized it.

‘No,’ she says, without even thinking about it. She cannot let that happen. Yasha’s already been through this once, if either of them is going to suffer through the pain, then it has to be Beau. ‘I’m not going to let you take the damage on this Yasha. It’s bad enough that you used your healing on me.’ It’s something she hadn’t even really noticed until she’d said it. That there had been a reason why her leg had felt slightly better this morning.

Yasha looks slightly abashed, but more than that…she looks sad, and lost. Beau’s heart breaks just a little, because she gets it. She gets being the protector and realizing that there are some people you just can’t protect. Beau wonders, vaguely, if they’re both thinking about Molly right now.

‘We get through this together, or not at all,’ she says.

Yasha gives a small smile. ‘Together, or not at all,’ she agrees.

Folsen

Somehow, they get through another day without anything happening.

The wait is somehow worse, as though they’re planning something. Something horrible.

What does happen, though, is they get some food. Or at least, it’s supposed to be food, but it looks less appealing than starvation. Beau’s used to going without food. She’s never really told anyone that before, and yet finds herself spilling the beans (no pun intended) to Yasha with hardly any prompting.

It’s that sort of day.

Food doesn’t help the absolutely agony that splits through her chest when she breaths, or the sinking feeling that there’s some things bleeding that are really better off not bleeding.

‘What was your childhood like?’ Beau finds herself asking, not because she expects an answer, or even really wants to know the answer (because she’s already opened up the door to more prying questions about her own childhood), but because it’s something to talk about.

Yasha doesn’t answer straight away, and when she does, it seems like her words are carefully chosen. ‘My tribe moved around a lot,’ she says, eventually. It’s not really an answer, and Yasha knows it. Eventually, without prompting, she elaborates. ‘There was not much in the way of schooling. The Skyspear put far more stock in martial achievements. I picked up a sword long before I ever picked up a pen.’

‘I mean, you know what they say about the pen and the sword, right?’ Beau quips. Yasha stares.

‘No, what do they say?’

Beau falters. The joke doesn’t really work if Yasha doesn’t know the saying, and it seems kind of crass to try and explain it. ‘Never mind,’ she says, and she’s not sure whether or not it’s her imagination, but Yasha looks a little disappointed.

Early in the afternoon, Jester finally messages, and she sounds nothing if not frantic. _Beau it’s Jester, we’re waiting at the rendezvous and you’re not there and we found Cassius’s body, please tell me they didn’t get you, we—_

It cuts off there.

Beau jumps, and winces. ‘Fuck. Yes, they did fucking get us. We’re both…alive for now. Not sure where. There’s snow outside, and the building’s made of stone. We were unconscious when they brought us in.’ She stops, and tries to count. ‘Fuck, that was more than twenty-five.’

Jester messages again, somehow even more frantic than the first time, and the only thing Beau can think to say is, ‘Don’t worry, we can hold out,’ which she’s almost entirely certain isn’t the truth, because they haven’t even started the bad stuff yet. They will start the bad stuff, she’s sure. It’s not really pessimistic to think that they’ve got bad stuff planned. People with good intentions don’t abduct you, and take your shoes and your coat, and manacle you together in a freezing cell.

No, if they’re lucky, they’ll be killed quickly, and maybe the rest of the group will find them soon enough that they can be brought back. Beau’s never died before.

She’s come close – she’s come really fucking close – but has never quite crossed the line.

She wonders if it’s painful.

‘Hey Yash?’ She feels the pain well in her throat. Everything hurts so godsdamned much, but if she stops talking, if she lets herself fall into that spiral of nothingness, then she doesn’t know if she’ll ever come out of it. ‘Have you ever died before?’

It’s the catalyst for a very weird conversation, and by the end of it, Beau’s sure that they’re both a little loopy from blood loss, having reached the “impractical philosophical conversations” stage of their imprisonment.

It doesn’t last long. Beau’s just starting to drift off to sleep when the light of a lantern pieces her veil of darkness. The cell door swings open, and before she can even respond, there’s a man on either side of her, dragging her to her feet. They clearly aren’t expecting her to fight back, and she manages to get two very quick punches off before they realize, after which Beau is rewarded with half a dozen kicks to the face, and to her already broken ribs. She feels at least a couple more ribs break, as the foot impacts her chest. Not the first time she’s broken ribs, not even the second or the third, or the sixth.

She wishes she could say that she’s used to it by now, but it’s not really the sort of pain you get used to.

Everything’s a little blurry for a while again, and it’s not until after, when they’re alone in the cell again, that Beau realizes how much Yasha had taken the brunt of their torture.

‘That was stupid,’ she says, as she cleans Yasha’s wounds. How hard is it for Yasha to see that she’s worth far more to anyone else than Beau is? People would be far more upset ( _had_ been far more upset) to lose Yasha.

Yasha doesn’t say anything. She gives a half sort of smile, and Beau can’t even begin to imagine what she’s thinking.

‘Here,’ Yasha says, and she takes Beau’s nose in between her fingers, and cracks it back into place. Beau breathes, and it’s a relief. At least she _can_ sort of breathe now. Yasha puts a hand to her cheek.

There’s something in that touch. Something that Beau has so rarely been on the receiving end of, a warmth, a…a gentleness that so few people have bothered to give. It’s comforting, and also very, very confusing.

When Beau rests her head against Yasha’s side once again to sleep, neither of them say anything.

Yulisen

The next day, Jester sends a bunch more messages, and Beau tries to answer as best she can, but already she’s sort of giving up hope that they’re going to be found quickly. At least not quickly enough to avoid all the bullshit that’s going to come over the next few days. The torture alone would be bad enough, but a bitter cold has set in that leaves them both shivering like mad.

It could be a natural cold snap, or it could be just another way of torturing them. In any case every shiver that runs through her causes her ribs to shift, and she can just barely bite back the sobs of pain, but can’t quite stop the tears that accompany them.

Yasha pulls Beau in closer, and it’s…nice. Not nearly enough to stave off the cold, but Beau’s always craved this kind of contact, the kind of contact her parents had been so unwilling to give. Jester’s the only person in the Mighty Nein that’s really anything of a hugger, so this is…It’s really good. Good enough that when Yasha brings up Kamordah, Beau doesn’t quite have the presence of mind to dwell on just how much she hates the place.

‘What about where you’re from?’ Beau asked. ‘Somewhere in the south of Xhorhas, right?’

‘Yes,’ Yasha tells her. ‘The Iothia Moorland. It’s mostly swamps, though it had many beasts to hunt. It was more muddy than cold, though the winters were sometimes quite harsh.’

‘Do you miss it?’ Beau asks, before she can stop herself. She knows that Yasha has some not so great memories associated with Xhorhas.

Yasha doesn’t answer straight away. When she does, it’s calm and measured. ‘There are some parts that I miss. Zuala, mostly, of course. Being out in the wild a lot was also very nice, even if the moorlands didn’t have much in the way of beautiful landscapes.’

‘When this is all over,’ Beau says, ‘We’ll go, and we can find a nice spot away from everything, and just appreciate the peace and quiet.’ Never mind that they might not make it out of this alive. Never mind that they could be dead by morning.

‘That sounds nice,’ Yasha says. Beau’s pretty sure she’s being sincere. She sounds sincere, at least. It’s usually pretty easy to tell when Yasha’s not being sincere. This is probably one of those situations where they’re both gonna say a lot of things that probably won’t get followed through on later.

Beau’s learned to dread the sound of footsteps. Instead of knives, this time they use whips. They don’t ask any questions, or even seem to want anything. Either they’re doing this to break them, or their doing it for fun, and neither possibility is particularly appealing.

It’s a long night.

Every time Beau thinks she might be falling asleep, she gets another pulse of pain in her ribs or in her leg, or in one of the freshly burning welts that mark her back.

There’s a weird conversation where Beau can’t quite tell what’s actually being said, about whether or not Yasha is spoken for, and there’s that thought again, how anything that’s said here might as well not be said at all.

Every breath that comes, it comes with wet and with pain. Beau doesn’t look, but she’s pretty sure there’s blood. She has the sudden realization that she’s probably going to die here. It had always been a pretty realistic possibility, but now…Now she knows it.

And Yasha seems to know it too. Yasha, who has somehow been a beacon of strength through all of this, who is covered in just as many cuts and bruises and burns as Beau, and yet somehow manages to act as though she hasn’t been wounded at all.

Really, in comparison to Yasha, Beau’s problems in life are petty. What are daddy issues compared to exile? What is getting dragged off to the Cobalt Soul compared to losing a wife?

Yasha is far stronger than Beau could ever hope to be.

Da’leysen

It’s a day that will stick in Beau’s memory for a long time as nothing less than the worst day of her life.

For a long time, it had been the day she’d been dragged away to the Cobalt Soul, and for a long time it had been the day that they’d lost Mollymauk, but they both pale in comparison to this utter shitcunt of a day.

They come with swords drawn, and they go for Yasha. Beau doesn’t even think before moving to stop them, and she thinks she might have broken one of their jaws, but she barely has time to follow through with an uppercut before they take the maul to her legs again. This time, they don’t stop until everything’s shattered to pieces.

 _This is it_ , Beau thinks.

She’s not sure where the line is – at - what point there is simply too much pain to go on – but she’s pretty sure she’s getting close to it. Her ribs are broken, and her legs are broken, and her whole godsdamned body is broken, and it doesn’t matter if the others show up now, because this is just…too much.

‘Grab my shoulder.’ Yasha’s voice pierces the veil, like an angel from above. If Beau blinks, she can almost pretend that Yasha is wreathed in an ethereal glow, that she has a halo above her head just like Reani’s.

Beau grabs Yasha’s shoulder.

The pain is like a white-hot dagger that pulses not just through her leg, but through her entire body. Worse than any other pain she’s felt in her life.

In lieu of anything else, Beau laughs.

‘Fuck,’ she says.

Yasha’s talking again, but this time whatever words there are, Beau can’t hear them. They’ve faded away into background noise, and now, if nothing else, it is absolutely clear that Beau isn’t walking out of this one. ‘You’ve gotta get outta here, Yash,’ she says, words slurred. ‘They’re gonna kill one of us soon, and…I’m not going anywhere.’

‘I don’t know how far I would make it,’ Yasha says, and the words cause Beau to look down for the first time. The wound in Yasha’s stomach is pulsing with every beat of her heart, the blood spilling and spreading like fresh ink on paper.

The words that pass between them are lost to the winds. Yasha puts a hand to Beau’s shoulder, and heals.

What happens next, Beau forgets.

Or tries to forget, in any case.

Because it ends with three people dead on the floor, and Beau leaning against the wall as the third one advances on her. She snarls, and leaps.

Her knuckles are bruised and bloody by the time she’s done, and his head is nothing more than a caved in mess.

‘Yasha!’ Beau drops to the ground, crawls over to Yasha, even though she already knows what she’s going to find. Two beautiful, mismatched eyes, glassy in death.

_No._

_Nonononononono._

Beau cries out, slaps at Yasha’s face, pounds on her chest, all to no avail. She knows of course. Had known since the second that Yasha had fallen to her knees, drenched in her own blood. Still quietly sobbing, Beau presses a kiss to the fallen aasimar’s forehead. Her lips come away bloody.

Each choked breath fills her mouth with a stronger copper taste.

She lays down against Yasha, resting her head against that familiar warmth for what may well be the last time.

Soon, Yasha will be cold, and Beau will be dead.

Miresen

It’s cold.

A new, biting chill has set in, and Beau’s not sure whether it’s the snow, or the fact that she has her arms wrapped around a cold, lifeless body.

Time passes.

It might be hours. Might be days. Beau’s not entirely sure. She’s vaguely aware of the sound of footsteps coming; not the slow amble of their captors, but the urgent run of a search party.

‘No!’ The voice is a shriek, and it doesn’t take a lot of cognizance to recognize that it’s Jester. Beau wonders what it must look like from that perspective; three bloodied bodies lying in a pile in the doorway, and then two more slumped against the wall, unmoving. Beau tries to move, to at least let them know that she’s alive, but her body doesn’t respond to any of the commands that she sends it.

It’s not until Fjord’s at her side, turning her onto her back, that she has the wherewithal to let out a pained scream. ‘Talk to me Beau,’ he says. ‘You with us? What needs the most healing?’

‘Yasha,’ she breathes, and tries to twist herself to see Yasha, who, just seconds ago, had been underneath her. ‘She—they k—Aaaagh!’ A sharp current of pain shoots through her. She’s pretty sure a rib’s poking into something that it shouldn’t.

‘Hey,’ Fjord says, gently. ‘Hey.’ He puts a hand to her abdomen. ‘Ribs?’ She nods, not trusting herself to do much else. The magic of the Wildmother flows through her. It feels warm, but still different to Jester’s magic, or Caduceus’s magic, or even Yasha’s magic. ‘Anything else?’

‘No, no, no, do Yasha first.’

‘Yasha’s not a quick fix,’ Caduceus says, gently, from her other side. Beau straightens, and immediately regrets it. The gasp catches in her throat, and transforms to a sigh of relief as the Wildmother’s healing magic passes through her once more, the bones in her legs knitting back together, and the rest of the magic darting through, picking up whatever Fjord had missed.

She blinks, and finally processes Caduceus’s words. ‘What do you mean “not a quick fix”? You can bring her back, right?’

‘We can.’ Caduceus’s voice is slow, as though he’s choosing his words carefully. ‘It takes a while to cast, and we need to…’ He hesitates slightly. ‘Make preparations.’

Beau doesn’t understand. ‘You’ve brought people back from the dead before,’ she says, looking between Caduceus, and a distraught looking Jester. Beau has to close her eyes rather than look at the bloodied head that’s in Jester’s lap. ‘It didn’t take that long those times.’

‘She’s been dead too long for that,’ Caduceus says, not even attempting to sugarcoat it. Beau’s not sure if she wants him to or not.

Beau looks around at the dank cell, smelling of blood and shit, and everything else that places like this smell like after you’ve been trapped in them for however long. ‘We can’t do it here,’ she says, her voice cracking on the words. ‘It…it needs to be somewhere nice. Somewhere with flowers.’

‘I think that’s a wonderful idea,’ Fjord says, gently. He puts an arm around Beau’s shoulder, and helps her to her feet. Beau turns away as Jester and Caduceus lift Yasha’s limp body from the cell floor.

‘They took our stuff,’ Beau says, remembering suddenly. She doesn’t care all that much about her own stuff (except maybe the gloves), but Yasha’s shawl, and her swords, and her book of flowers are probably all there. If they need to convince Yasha to come back…

‘We cleared the place out pretty well,’ Fjord tells her. ‘We’ll go take a look.’ There’s a conversation between the others that’s so quick that Beau’s mind hasn’t quite caught up before it’s over.

‘Come with me, Beau,’ Caleb says, gently, and Beau is torn. She feels like she’s about to collapse at any moment, but—she’s not sure why it’s so important that she has to go help find their things.

‘No,’ she says, batting away the hand that lands on her shoulder. ‘No, I—’ Everything sort of goes dark for a second, and Beau’s not sure what had happened in the interim because when she opens her eyes, she’s being held up by Caleb and Fjord, and they’re outside in the frozen cold. Caleb is down to his shirt, and his book-holsters, and Beau has a long, purple coat wrapped around her shoulders. The way they’re carrying her, her feet don’t touch the snow-bitten ground.

‘Here,’ comes Veth’s voice, and Beau feels her boots being pulled onto her feet. The left one takes a bit of work, because her leg is still a bit swollen, but at least her toes are warm now. Caleb pulls away, and Fjord helps Beau put her own coat on on top of Caleb’s.

‘What about Yasha?’ she breathes, and she can hear the slight intake of breath. ‘She’s gonna be cold.’

‘She’s—’ Veth starts, and Fjord clamps a hand down over her mouth.

‘I mean, I know she’s d—’ Beau stops, suddenly. She can’t quite bring herself to say “dead.” In any case, they wrap the shawl around Yasha’s shoulders, and Beau can take comfort in knowing that at least they’d gotten it back. Jester’s eyes are wet with tears as she straightens the shawl, tries to make it sit as nicely as possible.

Veth hands Beau her gloves, and her goggles, and her wraps, and she sort of holds them loosely. ‘I couldn’t find your staff,’ the halfling says, and Beau waves her hand unconcernedly. She thinks she might have lost the staff sometime before coming here. There’s a bunch of other stuff there to sort through, some of which is probably Beau’s, and some of which might even belong to whoever had been held captive there last.

‘It is ready,’ Caleb says. Beau looks down and realizes that for the last minute or so, he’s been transcribing the _Teleportation Circle_ on the cold, hard ground. It looks like a patch of snow has been cleared away by fire, but Beau had somehow missed that entirely.

They go through at a run, Beau helped along by Fjord, with Caleb at her back.

The walk back to the Xhorhaus is sort of a blur. Beau stumbles more than once, unsteady on legs that had just recently been very, very broken.

Through unspoken agreement (at least agreement that Beau is aware of), they go straight upstairs to the roof, and the tree, and the beautiful garden.

Jester lays Yasha’s body out onto the ground, and Caduceus begins to prepare the ritual. There had been some conversation there that the rest of them – or at least Beau – had not been privy to. Jester takes her paints, and begins painting a series of beautiful wildflowers around the body. For half a moment, Beau is transfixed. Then, she realizes that Yasha is still covered in blood.

She takes one of her wraps, still clutched in her hand, and frowns. ‘Give me your waterskin,’ she tells Fjord, who is surprisingly quick on the uptake. He takes another of the wraps, and Veth and Caleb find their own cloths, and together, they clean the body. It’s not perfect, but if Beau isn’t looking too closely, it maybe kind of looks like Yasha’s sleeping.

Except not really. Not at all, because there’s a bruise on her cheek, and her cold, dead skin is even paler than usual, and Beau can’t scrub the memory of Yasha falling to her knees and just fucking _dying_ in front of her. She chokes back a sob.

Caduceus places the diamond on Yasha’s chest, and begins to pray.

Grissen (and after)

Beau sleeps for about eighteen hours.

It’s weird. Sleep isn’t one of the things she’d really been deprived of, like food, or water, or blood, but for some reason, she’s exhausted anyway. Then, when she wakes, she goes and sit next to Yasha’s bedside.

It’s been twenty hours or so since they’d been rescued, and about eighteen and a half since the ritual had been completed, and Yasha isn’t showing any sign of waking up. Caduceus brings her food, and offers to sit with her, but Beau refuses. Not that she wouldn’t appreciate the company, but there’s something about this that makes her feel like she has to do it alone. A couple of times a day, Fjord bullies her into eating, at which point she eats as though she’s not going to get another meal for a week.

Precious little changes for days. Yasha’s skin is still pale (which admittedly doesn’t mean much), and her breathing and heartrate are steady. For days, Beau resists the desire to sleep in her bed, until Jester, backed up by the entire rest of the group, literally have to drag her to bed.

She wakes far earlier than she would have liked, but to the sound that she’s been dreaming of for days on end. The sound of Yasha’s footsteps.

Beau all but runs to the door, just barely beaten by Jester, who runs ahead and hugs Yasha.

Beau falters.

Yasha doesn’t look great; she looks tired, and withdrawn, and as though her muscles have maybe atrophied a little, but she’s alive, and she’s walking of her own accord.

Jester steps away, and there’s one brief moment that feels as though it’s stretching into a lifetime. Beau hobbles over towards Yasha and, without hesitation, hugs her.

‘Thought I lost you,’ Beau says. Her voice is a little gruff, and she’s trying not to let Yasha see how much she’s crying.

‘You could not get rid of me so easily,’ Yasha says. There’s a strange sort of look in her eyes, a look that Beau has seen from no-one else before, when Yasha adds, ‘They would not be able to keep me from you.’

And just like that, the world feels a little lighter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm in self-isolation for at least ten more days, so hopefully I will be able to finish off some stuff/start some new stuff. Tell me what you want to see.

**Author's Note:**

> May do a second chapter from Beau's perspective, but we'll see.


End file.
